10 December, 2012
Sky News AM Agenda
With Kieran Gilbert and Nick Champion MP
10 December 2012
8:45am
E & OE
Subjects: NDIS, Redfern speech anniversary, electoral enrolment, the federal budget
KIERAN GILBERT:
Joining me now from Melbourne Liberal frontbencher Senator Mitch Fifield and in Adelaide Labor MP Nick Champion. Gents good to see you both. Nick on the Redfern speech, twenty years on, you heard what Christopher Pyne had to say there. Important in terms of the journey to reconciliation in his view and also the view shared by Noel Pearson. But obviously a great, great more to be done in this area. Do you think that our nation’s leadership is suitably focussed on the area of Indigenous recognition and more broadly improving the lot of Indigenous people?
NICK CHAMPION:
Look Keating’s speech was a courageous speech and an important speech and I think you can track that speech to the later apology. And I think Christopher gave a pretty good and generous summation of what’s gone on over the last twenty years. Clearly we do have to work at closing the gap and clearly I think the other symbolic thing that needs to be done is that we need to recognise our Indigenous peoples in our constitution and that’s something that work is going on in the ground amongst communities out there around the place to try and get a consensus up about how we might best do that. So I think constitutional recognition and of course practical action on the ground.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Senator Fifield your thoughts? Obviously the combination of the two have and the priority given either to practical focus and the symbolic recognition, it has certainly wavered and been at different levels of the years depending on who is in government. But what’s your sense of the way this has been managed? Obviously there’s a great more to be done to deal with Indigenous disadvantage.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Symbols are important and the important thing with the Redfern speech was really how Indigenous Australians received it. Clearly from their reaction there were things that needed to be said that they wanted to hear. And I hope that we can get beyond the squabble between Paul Keating and Don Watson. What really matters here isn’t who said the words themselves but the fact that they were said by a representative of the Australian Government to Indigenous Australians. Symbols are important, but as important are practical measures. We have made progress over the last twenty years in Indigenous health and education but a lot more needs to be done. There is bipartisan support for that and as Christopher Pyne said earlier, should we win the next election and Tony Abbott is Prime Minister, we will have a leader of the Government who has these issues very close to his heart.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Nick Champion let’s move on. I want to talk about this issue of automatic electoral enrolment. You’ve heard the Manager of Opposition Business Christopher Pyne suggest it’s Labor rorting the system. Why not have people if they want to vote have to show identification to get on the roll in the first place?
NICK CHAMPION:
Well look let’s take the starting point as being is there any electoral fraud in Australia and of course there’s absolutely no sign of any electoral fraud of any significance in Australia. I think if you’re going to have compulsory voting and that’s a choice the nation made very early in the last century that we were going to have compulsory voting and if you’re going to have it then it makes sense to have automatic enrolment. And this automatic enrolment as I understand it is done off data that’s kept in various government agencies and the like and I think we can trust that data. I don’t think there’s any electoral fraud of any significance in this country and I don’t think anybody is trying to rort the roll as Christopher Pyne rather excitedly said. All we’re trying to do is make sure that those who are eligible to vote get the opportunity to vote and if one was going to be partisan we might say that it’s been a feature of conservative politics not just here but around the world that what they want to do is cleanse the roll of people who don’t vote for them. They’re always trying to knock out people who move
KIERAN GILBERT:
But Nick that’s not something isolated to conservative parties. Obviously it’s in Labor’s best interest to get more younger voters on the roll.
NICK CHAMPION:
Well you know what we believe is that if you’re going to have compulsory voting then you’ve got to make sure that everybody who is eligible to vote has the opportunity to vote. I mean that’s a feature of it. That’s the whole dynamic of the system. I mean what the Coalition seeks to do over time is to make sure people are slowly cut off the roll or that particular groups don’t get on the roll in the first place. You know I think we’d be better off I suppose if we didn’t have such partisan bickering about it but if we are going to have it then obviously I’ll point out the Coalition’s flaws.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Senator Fifield given the starting point that Nick Champion referred to there, that there is no rorting of the roll in this country, that you’ve got the various government agencies who know individuals coming on to the roll at the age of eighteen, it would be fairly easy to monitor wouldn’t it with a suitably empowered electoral commission?
MITCH FIFIELD:
I think the change in the legislation actually undermines the integrity of our electoral rolls. Yes we know that whenever Labor put forward changes to electoral law it’s with their own electoral advantage in mind. But just as we expect people to pay their taxes, we expect people to make sure that they have a valid drivers licence. We expect people to ensure that they are enrolled to vote. And when you have that requirement that people actually take the effort themselves to enrol to vote you reduce the risk of there being mistakes, which are much more likely when you have a system of automatic enrolment. So I think the system as it was, was more robust. But we’re not going to get hung up. The electoral laws are as they are. They are as the Parliament has determined. And we’re just going to get on with fighting the next election on those laws.
KIERAN GILBERT:
I want to move on now if I can. Two issues in a sense, the focus on the budget surplus. The Business Council of Australia saying the Government needs to look at a medium term plan now a more realistic plan to return the budget to the black. Senator Fifield I put this to Christopher Pyne as well. Given your commitment to multibillion dollar initiatives like the disability insurance scheme and other measures and given the state of the books, is it important that the Coalition also revise its promise to return to surplus if you win government. It’s just not going to be possible is it?
MITCH FIFIELD:
Kieran I think it’s important that we don’t verbal the Business Council here. They weren’t saying that this budget should not get back into surplus. They were not saying that the current government should not get the budget back into surplus. What they were saying was that they don’t believe the assumptions underlying the current government’s budget forecasts. What they were saying was in order to get the budget back into surplus you actually need a plan. And they don’t believe the current government has a plan. The Business Council weren’t saying they’re against a surplus in this financial year. So I think we’ve got to be clear about that. Our plan in relation to a budget surplus and an NDIS is to work towards both of those at the same time. The Productivity Commission, as you know, have a target date for implementation of the NDIS of 2018-19. We aim to be back in strong surplus well before then. And our view is that you can work towards both an NDIS and a budget surplus at the same time. An NDIS isn’t the enemy of a budget surplus and a budget surplus isn’t the enemy of an NDIS.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Well that’s in the longer term. Nick Champion, in the shorter term commodity prices continue to fall off. Most economists now saying that this wafer thin projected surplus is just not going to happen on current numbers. Is it time for Treasurer Swan to concede? There has been some shift in rhetoric but it just seems further cuts would damage an already softening economy now.
NICK CHAMPION:
Well look I think you’ve got to look at the government’s overall economic record which has been good. We’ve kept the economy growing throughout the period of the Global Financial Crisis and all of the shocks that have come after that. The latest commodity prices are just a feature of that. We do have a fair bit of, if you like, ongoing uncertainty in the rest of the world. The transition of the Chinese leadership, the problems of Europe, the issues of the fiscal cliff in America and those issues all have to be sorted out. That obviously has some effect on world economic growth and that has some effect on how the economy grows at home. But we’ve had economic growth throughout that period, low unemployment, low inflation, low interest rates over this period. Australians have every reason to be confident and this government has, as we’ve worked through this period, prioritised things so that we could run a surplus and we could keep downward pressure on interest rates.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Do you still think it’s realistic? Surely not.
NICK CHAMPION:
In the past we’ve been able to make significant spending cuts on things
KIERAN GILBERT:
It would be counter productive now though wouldn’t it?
NICK CHAMPION:
Well we’ve made some fairly tough decisions around things like the private health care rebate and other things which have had significant budgetary outcomes and significant spending cuts and helped you know, in achieving the outcomes that I talked about before. I think it’s too early to give up on a budget surplus. I think we should endeavour to get one. I think it’s been a good discipline for the government and I think aligned with all those other successful features of the Australian economy, it means that Australia stands as beacon of the world of growth, low unemployment, low inflation and low interest rates and certainty. And that’s why we have the central banks of other nations investing in our dollar.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Nick Champion and Senator Mitch Fifield we’re out of time this morning. Thanks both for your contribution today and right throughout the year.